Chew on This: Chef Caodan Tran

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DALLAS – There's no secret that Dallas has its fair share of restaurants – resulting in a fair share of chefs – but Chef Caodan Tran is taking her talents to new levels. And it's not a stretch to say she started from the bottom and worked her way up.

"I worked in the service industry since I was 18,” Tran told Newsfix, “That was my first job and I never left it. I feel like it chose me. I started cooking because it's like moving out on your own you have to survive. So I started cooking for myself and exploring different cuisines and just experimenting and teaching myself."

And so, a chef was born. But, Tran knew she wanted more.

"I think I always wanted to be in front of a camera, I just never had the opportunity to,” Tran said. "A, I like competition – that comes from sports. B, I just want to have a voice. I want to have a platform."

“It is real,” Tran told Newsfix. “The cooking is real. It becomes very real. The one thing that I noticed while doing it was that I didn't really feel cameras on me. I was just myself. And I don't know how that's going to come off."

Now, we can't tell you if she wins or not, but we can tell you what Tran thinks of the food scene in Big D.

"I have like a really weird relationship with the Dallas food scene,” Tran said. "I think there has been a lot of progress I just think there does need to be more. A lot of things that open that are trendy and in right now people flock to that, and they don't appreciate as much as someone who is really crafted and doing it properly. But I do enjoy the fact that people are exploring a lot more and being a lot more open to different things."

Here's hoping Dallas eaters continue to break out of their comfort zone, and that Tran's big break is the start of something great!